B (7:25)

I see this story and I'm a father of a five year old, actually a five year old little boy and I think to myself, oh my God, this is terrible. How did we arrest a five year old? Well, I do a little bit more follow up research and what I find is that the five year old was not arrested, that his dad was an illegal alien and then they went, when they went to arrest his illegal alien father, the father ran. So the story is the, that ICE detained a five year old. Well, what are they supposed to do? Are they supposed to let a five year old child freeze to death? Are they not supposed to arrest an illegal alien in the United States of America? If the argument is that you can't arrest people who have violated laws because they have children, then every single parent is going to be completely given immunity from ever being the subject of law enforcement. That doesn't make any sense. No one thinks that makes any sense.

A (8:15)

Obviously the Vice president is obviously 100% right about all of this. I mean the fact of the matter is that we have had a serious problem on our hands since there was an agreement, a consent agreement between the federal government and various judiciary bodies. The Flores Agreement, going back decades, that suggested that you could not hold a child and parent together in custody when they crossed the border. And so children were released into the interior of the country and this caused the Biden administration, among other administrations, to release the parents as well, to reunify the family. Well, now the idea is that you can't support anyone because they might have children. And so you can't reunify the family even if the father wants to be with the kid, and then you get blamed if the father takes off. When you hold the kid and the parent together, what exactly are immigration agents supposed to do? This, of course, makes everything unworkable, which I believe is the point. Now, some of this is part and parcel of a new ICE policy that suggests that there does not need to be a judge signed more in order to enter the home. Again, you heard that mentioned in the story from the New York Times that ICE agents are showing up at homes and based on administrative warrants, they are entering homes and they are looking for illegal immigrants. According to the Wall Street Journal, the Trump administration is asserting new powers to forcibly enter the homes of people they are hoping to arrest without a criminal warrant signed by a judge. Over the summer, lawyers at ICE and its parents agency, the Department of Homeland Security, penned a secret memo expanding the authority by which agents may enter homes of immigrants with final deportation orders. The people said, now what's happening here, what they're saying is that is effectively a judge signed warrant, or at least it's very similar. You have a deportation order, it has been signed by a judge, a final deportation order, and now they are using that as the predicate for the warrant. It is a civil warrant, not a criminal warrant. That is the basic argument that is being made. And when it comes to immigration enforcement, Supreme Court precedent suggests that administrative warrants issued by the attorney general rather than a judge could be utilized to arrest people pending deportation. And that was codified in the Immigration and Nationality Act. Actually, now there are restrictions on it, like, you're not supposed to enter a private home without consent. But again, the DHS has now said, well, maybe that changes because the final order of removal has already been signed. So the person's already had due process. It's not a matter of there has to be another judicial hearing in order to remove them. They already have a final order pending removal. And so once that order is already done, they've had their due process, and now it's just a question of executing the order. All of that will end up litigated in court. But to pretend that there is no legal basis whatsoever for what DHS and ICE are doing, that seems wrong. According to the Wall Street Journal, DHS and ICE officials have not publicized or broadly distributed the legal decision because they felt it would invite legal scrutiny. Immigration lawyers and advocates from Minnesota have documented cases of agents breaking down people's doors to arrest them without a warrant. But again, in some of these cases, you're talking about people who have overstayed their visas by legitimately 20 years. The most prominent case concerned a Minnesota man born in Liberia whose fourth Amendment right was violated by ICE officers when they broke down his door without his consent and without a judicial warrant. He was issued a deportation order in 2009. He was allowed to remain in the U.S. under ICE supervision. His most recent check in with ICE was December 29, 2025. And on January 11, immigration officers forced their way into his home and took him into custody. They said they had a warrant. Apparently this would be the administrative warrant. This will all get litigated in court. But the bottom line is this. There are plenty of situations that are going to be dicey when it comes to specific enforcement of general law. However, the media should not have to make things up like they found a five year old boy and they used him as bait in order to go after his father. They shouldn't have to do that. And the fact that they are having to do that means that again, the broad policy is largely inarguable, which is why you look for bad exceptions. Now, meanwhile, this sort of media coverage is leading to significant ire and rage in places like Minneapolis. It is ratcheting up the tensions with ice. Again. The Vice President was visiting Minneapolis and he said, listen, the problem here is Minneapolis authorities, not ice.

B (12:26)

But the number one way where we could lower the mistakes that are happening, at least with our immigration enforcement, is to have local jurisdictions that are cooperating with us. There are some very basic things that would make Minneapolis look like, look, Memphis, Tennessee, a blue city where you do not have this chaos in immigration enforcement because the local police and the local authorities are cooperating with us. So when you look at Memphis, Tennessee or Austin, Texas or any other community virtually across the United States of America, and you don't see the same level of chaos in Minneapolis, the natural conclusion is that it's not what ICE is doing in Minneapolis, it's what Minneapolis authorities are doing to prevent ICE from doing their jobs. And that's exactly what's happening.

A (13:11)

And Vance, of course is right about this too. I mean, the fact is that if local authorities were in fact working hand in glove with dhs, things would go a lot smoother. Vance also pointed out that protest does not mean assault. That if you're going to protest ICE agents, that does not mean that you can obstruct federal law or go after the ICE agents physically or threaten them.

B (13:30)

A lot of these guys are unable to do their jobs without being harassed, without being doxxed, and sometimes without being assaulted. That's totally Unacceptable. And that's one of the things that I want to send a message to is, yes, come out and protest. Protest me, protest our immigration policy, but do it peacefully. If you assault a law enforcement officer, the Trump administration and the Department of Justice is going to prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law. And I wanted to show some support for these guys.

A (13:56)

Now, again, when it comes to prosecuting people to the fullest extent of the law, the big story with regard to immigration over the past 24 hours is that now the DOJ is going after three people who essentially took over a church in the middle of a service in order to promote their immigration radicalism in violation of the FACE act, which is an act that was designed to do two things. It was designed to prevent people from obstructing abortion facilities on the one hand, and also designed to prevent people from storming churches essentially, and taking them over in the middle of services. According to npr, a prominent civil rights attorney and at least two other people involved in an anti immigration enforcement protest disrupting a service at a Minnesota church have now been arrested, according to Trump administration officials. On Thursday, Attorney General Pambani announced the arrest of Nakima Levy Armstrong in a post on X. Again, all that follows protesters entering the city's church in St. Paul, where a local official with U.S. immigration and Customs Enforcement serves as a pastor. And then Pambani later posted on X, a second person had been arrested, followed by a third arrest announced by FBI Director Cash Patel. Now, as always, social media, Tom foolery makes these things more ridiculous. Apparently, the White House posted a digitally altered image of one of the people who was arrested in the original picture. She looks composed. In the White House image, she is apparently dramatically crying, which is like, why? Why? Like why? Who's doing this? Stupidity. And it's, it's enough for the legacy media to make things up. You don't need people in the social media sphere for the White House making things up and making the job of the legacy media really a lot easier. That's really foolish. We'll get to what the church had to say, what its attorneys had to say about all this in a moment. 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And the director of Litigation for True North Legal, a person named Doug Wardlaw, put out a statement very similarly, saying the U.S. department of justice acted decisively by arresting those who coordinated and carried out this terrible crime, which is to invade a church and terrorize worshippers. That is his quote. The arrest and the prosecutions to follow will help ensure mob aggression like City's church experienced will not be repeated in any other house of worship. That is a good move by the Trump administration. Now, it doesn't mean that the people arrested aren't going to fib about it. One of the people arrested, as mentioned, was Nikima Levy Armstrong, a civil rights attorney. And here she was on CNN claiming that she was welcomed into the church. Well, I mean, under false auspices, as she then proceeds to explain. We did not rush into that church. We actually went and sat down and participated in the service. And after the pastor prayed, that is when I stood up and asked him a question in response to his prayer. And then I. And he responded to me. And then I proceeded to ask him about Pastor David Easterwood and how is it possible for him to serve as both the pastor and the director of ICE for Minnesota. And instead of responding to me, as soon as I said the name David Easterwood, the pastor says, shame, shame. And that is when I. Let us enchant justice for Renee. Good. And hands up. Don't shoot. Okay, so that, of course, is ridiculous. You don't get to go into somebody else's church, and then if you wait for five minutes and then break out into a disruption of the church service, call that permission to enter the church. That is not. That is not right. If you go into somebody's house claiming that you are, for example, a carpet salesperson, and you want to check out the house and the person invites you in, you proceed to steal all the crockery. Well, it turns out they didn't invite you in the house to steal the crockery. That is it. That is a ridiculous argument, and that one is not going to hold up in court. Now, one of the people that the DOJ wanted to charge was Don Lemon, the former CNN talking head and host. So, Don Lemon. And again, I know Don. Don is a. He is a. A character, to say the very least. Well, Don had pretty clearly, allegedly, allegedly coordinated with this group to be there. How else would he know to be there? He wasn't just attending a random church in St. Paul on that day. That is not what was happening. Well, he showed up, and a judge in Minnesota was handed an indictment for him and rejected the indictment. That judge rejected the federal prosecutor's attempt to criminally charge Don Lemon in relation to his presence this week during a protest at that St. Paul church. According to the Washington Post, this represents an extraordinary rebuke of a Justice Department that has drawn criticism for its forceful response to demonstrations against ICE offers officers. The magistrate judge's decision was Described Thursday by two people familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Their accounts emerged the same day department officials announced the arrest of, again, the other three. Well, it turns out, shock of shocks. It turns out that the judge in this particular case, according to Bill Mulligan of Fox News, actually his wife works as an assistant attorney general in Minnesota under Keith Ellison. So Keith Ellison is the attorney general of the state, and he, of course, is an ally of Don Lemon. In fact, here he was over the course of the last 24 hours joining Don Lemon's show to explain why Don Lemon didn't do anything wrong. This is.

B (21:30)

I mean, look, it's a. It's a.

A (21:31)

Why.

B (21:31)

It's a wild stretch and inappropriate. And the In. The in the Face act, by the way, is designed to protect the rights of people seeking their reproductive rights to be protected, and so that people, for a religious reason, you know, cannot just use religion to break into women's reproductive health centers. Right. So how they are stretching either of these laws to apply to people who protested in a church over the behavior or the perceived behavior of a. Of a religious leader is. Is beyond me. But they don't mind stretching these days.

A (22:09)

Okay, well, it's not actually a stretch. Now, Keith Ellison is out there telling Don Lemon, quote, people have a right to lift up their voices and make their peace, and none of us are immune from the voice of the public. And then he said, chanting cannot be a crime is freedom of expression. Well, actually, not so much. Not so much. It turns out that the FACE act explicitly talks about the attempts to disrupt church services. It explicitly protects religious freedom. It imposes criminal penalties on anyone who, quote, by force or threat of force or by physical obstruction, intentionally injures, intimidates, or interferes with or attempts to injure, intimidate or interfere with any person lawfully exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious worship at a place of religious worship. That is what it is. That's legitimately what the law was designed to do. Why? Well, because it was essentially a trade. This was a bipartisan bill signed into law in 1994. On the one hand, Democrats were saying that they wanted to protect abortion clinics from people who are obstructing the entrances. And Republicans said, we're not going to vote for that unless you also vote that you're not allowed to disrupt church services. So, yes, part of the Face act is preventing this sort of stuff pretty clearly, but that's what Keith Ellison is all about. Again, it is not about the impartial administration of law. And so there's something a little bit problematic about the fact that the wife of the judge who's protecting Don Lemon works for Keith Ellison. Representative Tom Emmer. He says Keith Ellison needs refresher course in law. This is true.

B (23:43)

But there's another thing he said, which is this behavior did not violate the First Amendment. This is what they do. They just go to talking points.

A (23:52)

Keith Ellison is a lawyer. He's our Attorney general. He's an embarrassment. He would prefer to prosecute cops and defend criminals rather than doing his job. And by the way, when you suggest that interrupting a faith community during while.

B (24:07)

They'Re worshiping is a exercise of your First Amendment rights, I would suggest he.

A (24:12)

Head back for a refresher course in law school because he clearly didn't learn.

B (24:16)

The law law because he certainly doesn't understand.

A (24:18)

Well, that, of course, is Tom Emmer, Republican of Minnesota. And he is right about all of that. The mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Fry, also came out and suggested that it was absolutely terrible, awful in fact, for the Trump DOJ to indict people who are disrupting church services and entering churches without permission in order to do that. Jacob Frey tweeted, quote, this is a gross abuse of power. The federal government is picking and choosing who to investigate, going after protesters and, and not the person who shot and killed one of our neighbors. I'm calling for Nakima to be released immediately. Well, I mean, good for him. And I declare bankruptcy like Michael Scott. You know that. And $5 will buy you a pretty mediocre cup of coffee. But it is always incredible to see who the Minneapolis mayor will bow before and who he will instead allow to trample all over the law, including, of course, people who are attempting to violate the rights of others to worship freely in a church. Now, the question is how all of this is going to impact the 2026 midterm elections. And that is not the biggest question. The biggest question, of course, is whether we continue to enforce the law. But this will be a major issue in the round to the 2026 elections. And there are a couple of ways this could go. On the one hand, Democrats have an inherent advantage on the generic ballot. It is an off year election. Off your elections typically move in favor of the party out of power. Nate Silver suggests that Democrats have some pretty good news here. The pretty good news for Democrats is that in the generic ballot, they are on average up by more than five points at this point in time. Not only that, it means that because there's a margin of Error. It is possible that anything from an 11 point Democratic win to a 0.4 point Republican edge could be within that margin of error. Well, that spells potential blowout for the Democrats. And even if Republicans were to win slightly in the national popular vote, that would be a disappointment for Democrats, but they might still win back the House. So Democrats certainly have some pretty significant advantages. Does that mean that Democrats are definitely going? Well, they're acting like it, aren't they? Democrats are acting as though it is inevitable that they are going to win the 2026 elections. That is the only rationale that I can, I can use to explain why they continue to embrace the most radical policies that Americans really are not going to like. So, for example, Eric Swalwell, one of my congressional bet noirs who is now running for governor of California, he says that he will make ICE agents unhirable in California. So if you were working for ice, he's going to say that you will never be able to work in California again. Why is this sort of thing going to benefit Democrats generically across the country?

B (27:05)

As governor, I'll use my emergency powers and I'll tell every state agency we are not as a policy hiring ICE agents because right now, these guys doing this work, it's a decision. No one's holding a gun and saying you have to work for ice. And so when I'm governor, if you're still working for ICE and you haven't got the message that no one's asking you to do this, you won't be hired in the state. And it's part of an approach that says either we can be on our heels as the most vulnerable in our community, or we can make them react and go on offense. And so I can't take on any other crisis until I do that first part of the job, which is, you know, to be a fighter protector for Californians.

A (27:43)

So again, what you have right now is a bit of a game of hold my beer when it comes to immigration. On the one hand, you have an administration that for the most part is attempting to go after criminal illegal immigrants, but doing a terrible job rhetorically in doing so. Truly not doing a very good job rhetorically in explaining that they are going after criminal illegal immigrants. They've been trying a little bit harder in the last couple of weeks. But the reality is the polling shows that Americans do not approve of what ICE they perceive ICE to be doing. As Karl Rove points out over at the Wall street journal In a January 12 Quinnipiac University poll, 57% of all voters and 64% of independents disapprove of how ICE is enforcing immigration law. Now, again, what they think of what ICE is doing is not actually what ICE is doing. Many of them think that ICE is simply going and rounding people up, generally at Home Depot. That is not what ICE is doing. They are in fact targeting criminal operations in which illegal immigrants are involved. Sure, when you're attempting to deport some 660,000 people, which I believe is the number that they've worked on deporting thus far. When you do that, you're going to catch up some people who may not have committed an extraneous crime. But ICE has been directing its resources at the worst offenders, no question. Well, the administration needs to do a better job of explaining that. Democrats, on the other hand, can't restrict themselves to saying that the Republicans should stick to criminal illegal immigrants. Instead, they go all the way with Eric Swalwell and talk about how they're going to make it so that ICE agents are unhirable. They go with Zoran Mamdani, who says he's going to attempt to defund ICE if he ever gets the opportunity. It is amazing how everybody misreads the tea leaves. Everyone misreads what the American people want. They believe always that the American people want what they are selling. But the most extreme version of it, and that is almost never true. That is almost never, ever true. That is why I cannot explain to you why exactly Virginia Democrats have decided to swing all the way to the left. So Abigail Spanberger won the governorship of Virginia. She was purporting to be a sort of Blue dog moderate Democrat. She, of course, had chewed out some of the more extreme versions of the Democratic Party. She'd chewed out aoc. She had shoot out Elhan Omar. She had suggested that their defund the police routine was bad politics. Well, now Virginia Democrats are shifting to far left policies. As Virginia Cruda points out at the Daily Wire, at the top of their agenda seems to be implementing some kind of wealth tax in Virginia. Lawmakers have already introduced several competing bills that would create new tax brackets with steeper rates for higher earners. One bill would nearly double the state income tax rate for Virginians who make over a million dollars a year. Not only that, they've also decided that they're going to make it easier to pursue voter fraud. And they are teeing up bills to make the state softer on crime and illegal immigration. One bill would eliminate mandatory minimum sentences for certain offenses, including but not limited to, illegal sales of cigarettes and alcohol. Certain conduct punishable as involuntary manslaughter and violations of certain provisions of protective orders. Another couple of bills pushed by Virginia Democrats would help protect illegal immigrants in Virginia. One by barring officials from arresting illegal immigrants in courthouses and another by finding employers who pay illegal aliens less than the established minimum wage. Why each party seems to feel the necessity to swivel all the way out to the left is absolutely beyond me. It makes no sense at all. And it is bad electoral politics, just bad. Now, Gavin Newsome, he what he's doing. Again, I think that Gavin Newsom is not the world's best candidate. I will say that what Gavin Newsom seems to be attempting to do is fib about his pretty radical record in California while focusing in on Trump. That is the happy medium that he is pursuing. Again, he was over in Davos and he suggests that what he is going to do is basically just attack Trump, but he's going to be moderate on policy, which and is a better pitch than many of the other Democrats who seem to be swiveling way out on policy. Now, the thing about Newsom is if you look at his policy in California, it's pretty dang radical. We talked about that on his podcast. But it is fascinating to watch him play maybe the only smart hand in the Democratic Party right now.

B (31:54)

So I put a mirror up to Trump and Trumpism in all caps. And it was ironic because Pravda, Fox News in America, others, they got offended by it. They said, well, where's his mother to wash his mouth out with soap? I said where the hell have you been? You've never said a word about Trump dressing up as the Pope, tweeting out and cosplaying on the world stage. And so the treasury of secretary talked about a Barbie doll. It was as if he was reading a diary and had just broken up with someone. I mean, that was the Secretary of Treasury using valuable time yesterday on the world stage, some sexual thank you for not sharing that on the official White House account. We're deeply in their head. I think the affordability agenda appears to be I'm living rent free in the Trump's head, Trump administration's head.

A (32:42)

Okay. So again, what he is doing is he is focusing all of his ire on Trump personally and he's talking about how he lives free in Trump's head and he talks about knee pads for Trump and all this kind of stuff because he doesn't want to talk policy. Because the minute the Democrats are forced to talk policy, they've got a problem. They have to lie and campaign as moderate Republicans or they have to go fully radical in order to entice their base. It'll be fascinating to see what they do. Now again, does that mean that Republicans are going to fare better? I mean, not necessarily. They can also do a bunch of stupid things. I think, frankly, they do do many stupid things by promoting the worst aspects of what seem to me very often eminently reasonable policies. But there are some factors that are moving in Republican direction if they can actually tout them properly. So, for example, the New York Times Sienna poll, the latest poll, shows that actually people are feeling better about the economy. If you take a look at people who believe that the economy is excellent or good versus the people who believe the economy is poor, Right now, about 29 of Americans believe the economy is excellent or good. About 38% believe that the economy is poor. That sounds bad until you realize that that is in fact the best number in over four years. That you have to go back before 2022 to get to a number even remotely like that. You have to go back all the way to 2020, 2019 probably. Again, number that is. That is better than that. So people are in fact feeling better about the economy and that may redound to President Trump's benefit. That at least is going to be the hope, and the hope should be that the administration's border policy starts to pay dividends, that people calm down about ice, or that the Democrats continue to go out on a limb over ice, and that there are some foreign policy wins that materialize sometime between now and the election. Now, speaking of foreign policy, there may be some major changes with regard to geopolitics over the course of the next few months. Begin in Cuba. According to the Wall Street Journal, emboldened by the US Ouster of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, the Trump administration is apparently searching for Cuban government insiders who can help cut a deal to push out the communist regime by the end of the year, according to people familiar with the matter, which of course would be an astonishing event if the communist regime in Cuba actually fell. That would be a game changer for a lot of Cuban Americans. It would be a game changer for the hemisphere in the same way that it would be a game changer if the Maduro Astra resulted in Venezuela eventually democratizing and becoming a non enemy of the United States again. We're already earning some geopolitical dividend by cutting China off from Venezuelan oil, for example. If Cuba were to turn into a friendly, that would change the hemispheric gravity in a pretty significant way. And President Trump has been pushing Cuba pretty hard. He stated in a January 11 social media post, quote, I strongly suggest they make a deal before it's too late. No more oil or money. They've assessed that Cuba's economy is close to collapse and that the government has never been this fragile. After losing their biggest benefactor in Nicolas Maduro, officials don't have a concrete plan to end the communist government that has held power on the Caribbean island for almost seven decades. But they see what happened to Maduro as a blueprint and a warning for Cuba. So again, what they're looking for here is a palace coup. They are not looking for some sort of full scale Bay of Pigs style invasion. Leave aside the history of the Bay of Pigs and whether or not the JFK administration did a terrible job with it. The reality is that the American people are not up again for a gigantic invading force in Cuba fighting on the hills. But if there is somebody who is friendlier in the government willing to topple the current regime, that would change things pretty significantly. Cuba has basically been cut off from all the money. The administration is also taking aim at Cuba's overseas medical missions. That is Havana's most important source of hard currency, including through visa bans targeting Cuban and foreign officials accused of facilitating the program. So were Cuba to fall, that'd be a big win, obviously for the President of the United States. The other big win that may be on the agenda is the situation in Iran. So reports suggest that the United States has deployed significant resources in the Persian Gulf toward Iran. According to Reuters, President Trump said on Thursday the US has an armada heading toward Iran. Here was the president on Air Force One. We have a big force going toward Iran. I'd rather not see anything happen, but we're watching them very closely. I stopped 837 hangings on Thursday. They would have been dead. Every one of them would have been hung. This is like from a thousand years ago. This is an ancient culture, very smart people, by the way. It's an ancient culture. 837 mostly young men were going to.

B (37:33)

Be hung on Thursday.

A (37:36)

And I said, if you hang those people, you're going to be hit harder than you've ever been hit. It'll make what we did to your Iran nuclear look like peanuts at an hour before this horrible thing was going to take place. They canceled it. And they actually said they canceled it. They didn't postpone it, they canceled it. So that was a good sign. But we have an armada. We have a massive. We have a massively heading in that direction and maybe we won't have to use it. We'll see. Now again, we will have to see what this means because just because the Iranian government said that they didn't hang a bunch of people doesn't mean they didn't murder those people or that they haven't kept those people under arrest until the moment when murder becomes more possible for them. On Tuesday, the USS Abraham Lincoln, which had been in the South China Seas, was in fact making its way to the region. According to ship tracking data, that aircraft carrier and three accompanying destroyers were all confirmed to be heading west toward the Persian Gulf. Meanwhile, the USS George H.W. bush is at sea in the Atlantic Ocean bound for Europe. That aircraft carrier is conducting live fire exercises and other training activities as per a post on the ship's official Facebook page. So we'll see if the President actually activates here. Reports coming out of Iran seem getting worse and worse in terms of what the impact was, what the regime actually did. The numbers continue to go up and up and up in terms of the number of dead and the number of wounded in Iran. The President set a red line. The Iranians violated the red line. The President just set a red line, by the way. He said that people should go out in the streets and continue to protest. Help is on the way. That is a pretty strong red line and Iran violated it. So does it require another trigger in order for the United States to do something? Again, doing useless things is not the goal here. Neither is a full scale invasion of Iran. No one would like to see hundreds of thousands of troops on the ground in the Middle east. For the 1000th time, no one is, no one is interested in that. The question is what is possible, what is doable and what ensures that the United States is steer is still feared on the world stage? Because you want to make sure that if you set a red line, you don't turn into Barack Obama, okay? Meanwhile, on the foreign policy front, the Europeans seem to be in a better mood after they pushed the President or or at least dealt with the President to the point that he did not levy gigantic tariffs on the European Union. They're apparently now willing to admit some truths. The German Chancellor, Friedrich Mears, he said at Davos that Europe does in fact have to revitalize its economy, that their, their forms and their regulations, their permitting processes have made the economy in Europe just weak. Germany and Europe have wasted incredible potential for growth in recent years by dragging feet on reforms and unnecessarily and excessively curtailing entrepreneurial freedoms and personal responsibility. We are going to change that now. Security and predictability take precedence over excessive regulation and misplaced perfection. We must reduce bureaucracy substantially. In Europe, the single market was once.

B (40:46)

Created to form the most competitive economic.

A (40:49)

Area in the world. But instead we have become the world champion of over regulation. He is right about that. Absolutely. He also added, this new world of great powers is being built on power, on strength, and when it comes to it, on force. It is not a cozy place. We do not have to accept this new reality as fate. We're not at the mercy of this new world order. We do have a choice. We can shape the future. To succeed, we must face harsh realities and chart our course with clear eyed realism. Mers did suggest, however, that Europe should continue to pursue strong transatlantic ties with the United States. So he is operating in the world of reality. So he says that yes, the EU may have prompted some movement from the Trump administration away from going after them over Greenland. That does not mean that Europe should abandon the United States or vice versa. So it seems that overall, the President may have achieved many of his goals in Europe. Get them to deregulate, get them to be stronger on their borders, get them to spend more on their defense. And you know, as far as Greenland goes, I'm not really that concerned about small victories won in Greenland or pride out of the Europeans in Greenland nearly as much as I am about the Europeans taking seriously the threats that come from other places on the globe. And the reality that we do need strong allies, and that means sometimes pushing our friends to do the right thing in order to strengthen their own economies and their own military. So that's on the positive side of the ledger. On the negative side of the ledger, the continued unwillingness of the Trump administration to face reality when it comes to Vladimir Putin seems short sighted to me at the very least. Apparently Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner headed on over to Russia in order to greet Vladimir Putin at the Kremlin. So there they are. They're meeting. Steve Woodcoff looks a lot warmer with Vladimir Putin than Jared Kushner does in that particular day. According to Bloomberg, there's no immediate word on the outcome of the meeting, which ended well after midnight Moscow time. That was Witkoff's seventh visit to Putin. Now again, Witkoff in the past has gone in there and used Putin's translator. So I've yet to see Woodcoff's extraordinary negotiating leisure domain. With regard to the Ukraine Russia deal, US And Ukrainian officials have said they made significant Progress on their 20 point plan. But Moscow has yet to actually acknowledge any of that as a positive. Meanwhile, the United States is apparently weighing a complete military withdrawal from Syria. Presumably they are doing so because they are now believe that the Syrian government is a friendly. It seems to me a little bit early to declare the Syrian government a friendly in this fashion considering that they and the Turks are basically going around killing the Kurds and also going after religious minorities like the Druze in the south. The Turkish government is one of the more malign actors on the world stage right now. And pretending that they are an erstwhile American ally is foolhardy in the extreme. They're run by a radical Islamist recipe, Erdogan, who has gotten rid of the secularist leaning military apparatus. He has spent a quarter century doing that and he has converted it into an Islamist leaning governance structure that is friendly with a wide variety of terrorist groups around the Middle East. Now according to the Wall Street Journal, Washington is considering a complete withdrawal of American troops from Syria as Syrian President Ahmed Al Shara moved to wrest control of the northeastern part of the country from an American backed Kurdish led militia. So yet another presumed ally that the Americans have abandoned over the course of the last 25 years or so would be the Kurds. I mean at this point the Kurds must be tired of American guarantees that end with Americans basically leaving them in harm's way. The move would end a decade long American operation in Syria which began in 2014 when Barack Obama intervened in the country's civil war. And it would come as SH's government ordered the US military's longtime partner in the region, the Kurdish led Syrian Democratic Forces to disband. The US considered a drawdown in Syria before now Again, drawing down is not the worst idea in the world. It's just that if you believe that the Syrian government is a friend to the west, you've got another thing coming. Normalization with the Syrian government while they go after the America's ally in that region in the Syrian Defense Forces is pretty astonishing stuff. Roughly a thousand American troops are in Syria, most scattered across facilities in the northeast where they are co located with the sdf. Apparently the Pentagon is questioning the viability of the American military's mission in Syria after the SDF's defeat. Much of the assault's success was the result of Arab tribal forces who were once loyal to SDF switching sides to back the government, presumably with the help of the Turkish military. You know, pretending the Turkey has nothing to do with this would be ignorant. The fact that we continue to talk about selling them F35s and treating them as a NATO ally is sort of insane to me. Speaking of which, if we are talking about the insanity of welcoming aboard the sort of Western alliance countries that ought not be part of it, there's been a lot of talk about what's going to happen in Gaza. The attempt to rope in Qatar and Turkey or allow them in is foolhardy in the extreme. These are both countries that have supported Hamas. Soup to nuts. This does not mean that what is being laid out by the United States in Gaza is totally impossible. It means the only way that what the United States is trying to do becomes possible is if you reckon with reality. Reality has a funny way of biting you directly in the ass if you ignore it. And pretending that without security arrangements, or if you have security arrangements, including terror allies, that you're still going to be able to build a thriving society in the heart of the Gaza Strip, one of the most radicalized areas on planet Earth. That seems short sighted at the very least. So the United States has now listed its plans for the Gaza Strip. According to the New York Times, Jared Kushner laid out an ambitious and highly speculative vision for the future of the Gaza Strip in Davos. The presentation of featured slides depicted gleaming skyscrapers rising on Gaza's coast and construction of entirely new cities. The plan would require investment of at least $25 billion in the Palestinian enclave. Gaza, said Jared Kushner, would be rebuilt in phases, starting with the south. The southern city of Rafah would be rebuilt in two to three years. That, of course, is the area that right now is essentially protected by the Israeli Defense Forces. Other areas, like Khan Yunas, are not at this point, which means that Hamas is likely going to infiltrate those areas. Hamas continues to hold arms, including small arms. Jared Kushner outlined the proposal during the gathering. Here was Jared Kushner spelling it out.

B (47:42)

So we did a master plan. We brought in. I thank you, Kirkabaya, who's one of the most successful real estate developers and brilliant people I know. He's volunteered to do this. Not for profit, really, because of his heart. He wants to do this. And we've developed ways to redevelop Gaza. Gaza, as President Trump's been saying, has amazing potential. And this is for the people of Gaza. We've developed into zones. In the beginning, we were toying with the idea of saying, let's build a free zone, and then we have a Hamas zone. And then we said, you know what? Let's just plan for catastrophic Success. We, Hamas, signed a deal, demilitarized. That is what we are going to enforce. People ask us what our plan B is. We do not have a plan B. We have a plan. We signed an agreement. We are all committed to making that agreement work. There's a master plan. We'll be doing it in phasing. In the Middle east, they build cities like this in, you know, 2, 3 million people. They build this in three years. And so stuff like this is very doable if we make it happen.

A (48:30)

Hey, now the question becomes, how do you disarm Hamas? That is always the question. Always. So Jared Kushner said that there will be demilitarization within the first hundred days.

B (48:39)

As we're creating this system, hopefully it's something that we can just document these learnings and make them available to all else who want to use them in the future. So demilitarization, this is something we're starting now. We have a new government in Gaza. This government will be working with Hamas on the demilitarization to really take the principles that were agreed to in the document to the next phase, and hopefully that will be successful. Without that, we can't rebuild. So if Hamas does not demilitarize, that will be what holds back Gaza and the people of Gaza from achieving their aspiration. And that's very important. So the next hundred days, we're going to continue to just, just be heads down and focused on making sure this is implemented. We continue to be focused on humanitarian aid, humanitarian shelter, but then creating the conditions to, to move forward.

A (49:22)

Okay, well, again, that doesn't really answer what happens if Hamas refuses to disarm. That is the $100 billion question. What if Hamas simply refuses to disarm? What happens next? Who's the enforcement body? Is the enforcement body going to be Turkey and Qatar kind of testifying that they've disarmed? Will be the idf who is actually going to do the dirty work if Hamas refuses to disarm. That remains the big question here. Now, again, the plan itself is inspiring and good if it can be achieved, but it does require the demilitarization of Hamas and it requires the denazification of Gaza, meaning that a huge percentage of the people in the Gaza Strip supported Hamas and continue ideologically to support Hamas. That means education programs that aren't run by Hamas. It means the UN RWA becoming a non entity in the Gaza Strip. There are a lot of steps that have to be taken if this is going to materialize. If it does, that'd be great. But unless you can answer that question, how does Hamas get disarmed? You know, I think that a lot of obstacles remain. Meanwhile, on the cultural front, one of the great moments in culture history happened over the course of the last few days. And I know we were remiss that we did not report on this. But you know who did was Lyndon Blake, Daily Wire reporter extraordinaire and correspondent from podcast land, where apparently Michelle Obama appeared on the most important podcast of our time. It is basically Einstein for Dummies. Call Her Daddy. So, Lyndon, tell me about this magical moment.

C (50:52)

This is insane. Ben, I know you're not the Call Her Daddy target audience, so I'm going to fill you in on what this podcast is really about. We had Michelle Obama on with Alex Cooper, and they spent the first half of the podcast talking about objectifying women and how it is so awful. Meanwhile, the podcast is called Call Her Daddy. That is a play, tongue in cheek on a podcast that started out being a hyper sexual podcast. The whole point was to teach girls how to entice men, how to get the guys to call them daddy and be controlling and manipulative. So it's very ironic anytime I hear Alex Cooper try to tell me about how women are objectified in this country, when I'm like, you made your career on telling girls how to act in the bedroom.

A (51:41)

Now, we have seen other major political figures appear on Call Her Daddy. Most famous, Kamala Harris appeared on Call Her Daddy during her successful run for the presidency. Wait, it didn't work out Amazing. So Michelle Obama shows up on this podcast and how did it go? Do they have, you know, deep and important conversations about Michelle Obama's sex life or favorite positions or what? Because I know that that sounds like a joke, but that's actually a thing that Alex Cooper does talk about on her show is stuff like that.

C (52:09)

Yeah, well, she intro this the same way. She kind of did the Kamala interview. She's like, I've thought about, you know, all the way through this interview, but I'm going to go with this. So she the same thing with Michelle Obama. She opens the interview and she goes, you know, I thought we could do this way and talk about your sex life and all of that. And Michelle was like, or lack thereof, you know, And Alex goes, well, I was going to go this way, and let's talk about being a woman and women empowerment. And then they just go on to just talk in circles about how women are treated so awful in this country. And all men care about is the way women look and how they dress. And it's just not reality. But that's what we learn about those that lean less. They don't live in reality.

A (52:55)

Well, one of the things that I find really hilarious about this is that apparently Michelle Obama went on there and complained about the patriarchy. And one of the things that came up was women taking men's names when they get married and how this is very terrible for them. Which is funny because her name is Michelle Obama and no one would know who the hell she is if she were still Michelle Robinson.

C (53:13)

Yeah, she acts like it's the hardest thing ever to have to teach herself how to write Mrs. Period instead of M I S s. Like, oh, the horror of changing your name, changing how you're addressed. That's just one other thing that women have to that men don't. I thought that whole segment was silly. And then you have Alex trying to bring it back to her audience who are single women in the dating world. And she's like, michelle, this is something that comes up with my audience members. You know, they're women and they are successful, which I think I'm successful. I love success. But she's like, they're scared to date a guy because most men don't want that. They're going to be intimidated. And all I can think about in my head is I'm like, no, most men don't think that. In fact, only losers think that way. Like most men, I think. I don't know about you, Ben, would enjoy some more golf trips if their wife was successful. I think they like it. I did this segment once on Broadway in Nashville where I asked women if they would date a guy that made less than them 100%. The answers were no. So what's that about?

A (54:16)

Yes. I mean, it is. It is sort of funny how much of this interview seem to be projection. There's a lot of talk about how men just care all the time about what women wear, to which I thought to myself, I've been married for almost 20 years. I'm not sure I can name more than, like, two outfits my wife has ever worn in 20 years. It is. It is. Like men never think about what women are wearing. It's such absolute nonsense. But again, everything is the fault of the patriarchy, apparently. Yeah.

C (54:42)

I asked my husband. I'm like, do you remember what my wedding dress looks like? He's like, it was white. And I was like, there you go, ladies. Like, they don't. They don't. They don't think about that.

A (54:53)

Well, it was good times over on Call Her Daddy. As per Our usual arrangement. And I appreciate that Lyndon Blake, daily Wire reporter extraordinaire, suffered through that. Lyndon, thanks for your time. Thanks for sticking through all of that and reporting on it.

C (55:05)

Yep, two hours. I'll never get back.

A (55:08)

Meanwhile, on the cultural front, we have the 20, 26 Oscar nominations. I'm gonna hold off on, on some of the rankings of these movies. I haven't seen some of them. I do know that One Battle After Another, which has received 13 Oscar nominations, is an incredibly overrated film. You can go view my review of that film over on YouTube. I thought that the film is poorly written. I think that the film is not acted well. I think Sean Penn particularly overacts in that film. It is not a great Paul Thomas Anderson flick. It's, it's obvious writing. It's stupid. It's, it's a really off putting movie for people who are not ardent leftists, frankly. Some of the other movies that have been granted large numbers of nods, Sinners was given the most Oscar nominations ever. Now, to be fair, it has more Oscar nominations than say, All About Eve. To be fair, there are more Oscar categories now. So that's sort of like, you know, Roger Maris hitting 61 home runs in more games than Babe Ruth was able to play. So I'm not sure that I follow that, but I haven't seen Centers yet. So I'm going to hold off on commentary on Sinners. There's some other nominations that I think are well deserved. Ethan Hawke was nominated for best lead actor for his role in Blue Moon in which he plays the lyricist Lorenz Hart. He's terrific in it. I, I, I loved parts of the movie, not the whole movie, but he's really, really good in that film. Wicked for Good basically got shut out. That is not a gigantic shock, frankly, because as I mentioned on the show, the second act of Wicked is not as good as the first act of Wicked. And so it wasn't as though that was going to clean up at the Oscars. Also, Cynthia Erivo, who was sort of the standout in the first one, is less of a main character in this movie. The one who got snubbed is Ariana Grande, who is good in the movie. I don't think she's fabulous, but I think she's good in the movie. Some of the other best picture nominees include Hamnet, which is Chloe Zhao's movie about William Shakespeare and his son Hamnet, which was supposed to serve as the inspiration for Hamlet in the movie. Haven't seen that one yet. So hold on it F1 was nominated for best picture, which again, F1 is fine. It's okay. It's a worse version of Top Gun, Maverick and Ford versus Ferrari. It's like, all right, you know, didn't love it. Sentimental value. Haven't seen that one yet. Frankenstein, which again, I. I thought was going to be great, and I was kind of underwhelmed by this is Galo del Toro's Frankenstein, which is beautifully produced but kind of shockingly flat in. In the way that it's presented. The Secret Agent, which is a foreign film. I haven't seen that one yet. Marty supreme, which is supposed to be good. Train Dreams, which is mostly kind of like a Terence Mallet film kind of. It's not. It's. Terrence Malik didn't do it, but it was nominated for best picture. It's. It's a. It's a movie about a man who suffers a family tragedy and then sort of travels around the country looking at pretty things. Not, you know, again, I thought it was overrated. Begonia by maybe the most overrated director working today, or at least one of the five most overrated directors, Yorgos Lanthimos. Everything he does is obvious. Everything that he does is far left wing. Begonia is about a CEO, a pharmaceutical CEO who was kidnapped by people who believe she's an alien. And spoiler alert, it goes exactly where you think it was going to go. One battle after another, which, as I say, was wildly overrated. And Sinners, which was nominated for 16 Academy Awards. So those are your best Picture nominees. Kind of an underwhelming crew in a lot of ways. On the other hand, I'm not sure what I've seen this year that. That rises to that level. I. I'll give you better ratings once I've seen all of the movies. I tried to make a habit of seeing movies before I actually rate them or talk about whether they're good or not. Alrighty, folks. Coming up, you'll get to tennis players being asked about their politics. I'm not sure why that is happening, but seems to be happening a lot. Remember, in order to watch, you have to be a member. If you're not a member, become a member and use code Shapiro checkout for two months free on all annual plans. Click that link in the description and join us.

B (59:09)

What was it like, Marlin, to be alone with God?

A (59:18)

Is that who you think I was alone with? Maradin? I knew your father. I am yet convinced that he was not of this world. All men know of the great Taliesin who are my father.

B (59:36)

That the gods should war for my soul.

A (59:39)

Princess Garris, saviour of our people. I know what the Bull God offered you. I was offered the same. And there is a new power at work in the world. I've seen it. A God who sacrifices what he loves for us.

B (59:57)

We are each given only one life, singer.

A (60:00)

No. We're given another. I learned of Yazu the Christ. And I have become his follower.

B (60:09)

He's waiting on a miracle. And I think you can give him one.

A (60:13)

Trust in ya. He is the owner.

B (60:15)

Hope for men like us, Fate of.

A (60:17)

Britain never rests in the hands of the great Light.

B (60:20)

Great light, Great darkness. Such things mattered to me then. What matters to you now, Mistress of lies?

A (60:29)

You, nephew. The sword of a high king. How many lives must be lost before you accept?

B (60:40)

Accept the power you were born to wield.

A (60:45)

So clinging to the promises of a God who has abandoned you.

B (60:49)

I cannot take up that sword again.

A (60:52)

You know what you must do.

B (60:55)

Great Light. Forgive me. The time has come to be reborn.

A (61:25)

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B (61:41)

Give it a try@mintmobile.com Switch limited time.

A (61:45)

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